


To Love A Brother

by Masked_Man_2



Category: Othello (2001), Othello - Shakespeare
Genre: Brotherly Love, Desire, Driven to Evil, Essay, Essays, F/M, Friendship/Love, Hatred, Jealousy, Love, Love/Hate, M/M, Platonic Male/Male Relationships, Platonic Relationships, Romantic love, Sexual Tension, Unrequited Love, Unresolved Sexual Tension, Villainy, Written for a Class, academic essay, love to hate, motivation, written for school
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-01
Updated: 2016-11-01
Packaged: 2018-08-28 08:41:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,258
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8438932
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Masked_Man_2/pseuds/Masked_Man_2
Summary: "It was about love. That's what you've gotta understand. Don't talk to me about race. Don't talk to me about politics. It was love. Simple as that." 
An analysis of the theme of love as a precursor to hate in Othello, comparing Shakespeare's text to Andrew Davies's 2001 screenplay.





	

To Love A Brother: 

An analysis of the importance of homosocial love in  _ “Othello” _

 

_ Othello  _ might not be the most obvious of Shakespeare’s plays to turn to when considering the conflicts between diverse expressions of love as they pertain to Shakespeare’s own society, but its dramatic representation of those conflicts draws it inextricably into a place of importance today. In a world in which colloquialisms such as “bros before hoes” are bandied about with blasé pride, and issues surrounding malleable sexual preferences abound, the idea of love as a sentiment of manifold expression is more relevant now than ever before. Screenwriter Andrew Davies, in his 2001 film adaptation of  _ Othello _ , explores this conflict in relation to Shakespeare’s text by bringing to light the potential effects of love in all forms-- love that is platonic, romantic, sexual, unrequited, and betrayed-- on the central tragedy and mystery of the plot. By highlighting the strength of connection between Othello and Iago as a contrast to the more tenuous-- and therefore severable-- link between Othello and Desdemona, Davies provides a strong foundation for the film’s exploration of the conflicts between sexual and platonic love in complex interpersonal relationships. However, he also places Iago, rather than Othello, at the forefront of the dramatic focus, shifting the emphasis of the adaptation to motivation rather than outcome. The idea of love as a precursor to hate becomes central to the ubiquitous “why” that accompanies Iago’s character, allowing Davies to utilize this characterial ambiguity as a means of expressing the complexity of love in interaction-- love, essentially, as a multifaceted answer to a deceptively simple question. The modern world is a nuanced one, a complex one, in which anything that is simple and concrete must be false. Fitting, then, that love, the most natural and unnatural of human emotions, should be similarly confounding.

In Shakespeare’s  _ Othello _ , Iago offers multiple explanations for his gross betrayal of Othello, ranging from “(he has) already chose (his) officer.../ That never set a squadron on the field/ Nor the division of a battle knows/ More than a spinster” to “it is thought abroad that ‘twixt my sheets/ He has done my office,” with a great deal of “I hate the Moor” added in to supplement the other reasons (1.1.16, 21-22, 1.3.378-370). None of these reasons, however, seem sufficient to justify the magnitude of the treachery that Iago intends to commit, prompting critics like Coleridge to level at him accusations of being a “motiveless malignity” or a personification of Vice; the hateful urge to completely destroy a man’s life by convincing him of his wife’s infidelity simply does not line up with the feelings of jealousy and resentment that might be engendered by the reasons he cites. Davies attempts to rectify this disparity by dispensing with critical notions of evil without cause and textual indications of disproportionate retribution, playing on the idea that such strong hate as Iago’s could only be wrought of an opposing emotion that was equally puissant-- love. His film opens with Iago (called Jago in the film) soliloquizing: a disconsolate, dispassionate narrative of displaced diegetic sound playing over the image of Othello and his bride (Dessie rather than Desdemona) consummating their marriage:

It was about love. That’s what you’ve gotta understand. Don’t talk to me about race; don’t talk to me about politics. It was love. Simple as that. She loved him as well as she knew how; he loved her...more than any man should love a woman. ...Tragedy, right? No other word for it. ...I loved him too, you know. ( _ Othello _ )

Jago makes it clear from the outset that he is doing what he is doing because of love: more specifically, because of the perceived rejection of his love. A later speech of Jago’s-- perhaps his only moment of genuine emotional expression in the film-- reveals the root of this sense of betrayal. “I love you, John, I did!” he cries, beating the air in a fury as he stalks unseen and unheard through the halls of the Met, but he goes on to clarify the precise conditions of his love, saying, “I  _ could _ , when you were comfortable, halfway down the greasy pole with your tongue the level of my arse, but now, but NOW! How can I love you now!” ( _ Othello _ ). Despite the uneasy depiction of love as a limited commodity, running dry as soon as Jago is placed into a subordinate position to Othello, the sense of pain wrought by this rejection of love cannot be ignored. Furthermore, the audience’s cognizance of this sense is heightened when taking the relationship between Othello and Dessie into account. Theirs was a whirlwind romance “framed” to be exploited-- a meeting of passions and ephemeral attractions, not of minds and hearts (1.3.380). Jago aims a great deal of his suspicion-wreaking words at the fact that Othello and Dessie “don’t...know each other very well--” to be more precise, that Othello doesn’t know Dessie very well. Her childhood and her previous sex life are all but unknown to him, and he has no way to counter the insinuations of promiscuity in her youth because he simply doesn’t know, and doesn’t trust-- her. Jago, on the other hands, is Othello’s mentor and friend of old, as well as his closest confidant; the level of trust, of camaraderie, between them, arguably runs deeper than any romantic bond between Othello and Dessie. That strength of trust, that emotional closeness, enables Jago to influence and manipulate Othello so successfully, but, at the same time, engenders profound hate on Jago’s end. Here are two men who have worked, fought, and policed together for years, perhaps even decades, and suddenly one of them turns away to marry a woman that he barely knows, presumably without bringing the other into his confidence. While the added tension of Cassio’s involvement is removed in the film by placing “Michael Cass” in an inferior position to both Jago and Othello, nothing supports the idea that Jago and Dessie had been acquainted with each other prior to the wedding. When Lulu (the film’s Emilia figure) remarks that “Dessie’s pretty special, too,” Jago’s reply is a hushed, almost worried, “Oh, I can see that:” as though he, upon seeing for the first time this woman who has-- in three months’ time-- stolen the heart of his best friend when he himself has never had the chance to reveal the depth of his feeling, comes to realize just how little the bonds of friendship can be trusted  ( _ Othello _ ). If they may so easily be abandoned without a second thought, there is no sense in placing faith in them when they are not reciprocated; there is no sense in upholding them when they are not being similarly upheld. The bond between Othello and Jago may well have been wholly platonic, but it was no less profound for its lack of romanticism. That lack would not make the sting of Othello’s ostensible betrayal any less painful.

In Shakespeare’s play, Iago is far more ambiguous regarding the depth of his love for Othello, but undoubtedly, a highly charged emotional connection betwixt the two does exist. The language used by Iago when referring to Othello reflects bitter hatred time and time again, to the extent of his making light of his own hatred in such lines as “I have told thee often, and I re-tell thee again and again, I hate the Moor;” his hatred, essentially, runs so deep that it has become as much an intrinsic part of him as his age or rank (1.3.354-355). His love is a more nebulous thing, often expressed in terms so fleeting and derogatory that one is never entirely certain if he is even telling the truth. “From hence/ I’ll love no friend, sith love breeds such offense,” he claims, but whether this so-called love is romantic or platonic or something else entirely, whether this love even  _ exists _ , is unclear, for so much of what Iago says to other characters onstage is (at least in part) an abject lie; even the audience members, his closest confidants, are not necessarily made privy to true and honest emotion (3.3.84-85). The actor playing Iago must choose to either take those statements of hatred as fact and those of love as falsehood, or else judge the outward semblance of hatred to be a guise under which a deep and long-abiding love must be kept forcefully hidden: the beauty of the character lies in the audience’s inability to take him at his word. Iago might mean exactly what he says, or the opposite. He could profess his hatred in confidentiality, claim his love in public, and hide the truth of that love’s existence in others’ ignorance. The truth of the matter cannot be wholly discerned, but it matters not in the end; what matters is how convincingly the decision to be governed by one sentiment or the other is portrayed.

Davies’s film explores that latter idea of there being real, yet hidden, love between Othello and Jago in multiple ways; the two share the deep, platonic bond of longstanding comrades in arms while simultaneously expressing feelings that are more overtly romantic, even sexual. Numerous scenes in the film, from the multiple bedroom sequences to the scene with Othello and Jago discussing the aftermath of an interrogation in the gentlemen’s club (the film’s parallel to the first part of Act 3, Scene 3), are lit with the soft caramel lighting that connotes rich romantic passion, while other scenes between Othello and Jago display an eroticism that mirrors the intense sexual tension of the play’s “dream” sequence and faux-marriage. Jago touches Othello constantly: hugging him tightly, stalking predatorily up to him and trapping him with his body, massaging him, making the swipe of his saliva for DNA into a pseudo-sexual caress, kissing the top of his head as he restrains him in the restaurant, et cetera; there seems to be a sort of repressed sexual desire laced through his interactions with Othello that goes far beyond expressions of affection in a relationship strictly platonic ( _ Othello _ ). Comparable scenes of physical proximity betwixt the two within the play are not quite so overtly sexualized as to imply any latent homoerotic sentiment; with the exception of Cassio’s contrived dream, nothing in the text refers explicitly to physical contact between men, though the inevitability of its presence is heavily implied by the play’s marital context. The increased puissance of the effect of love as an impetus to evil in the film, however, willingly and vividly juxtaposes platonic, brotherly love with blatant sexual desire, and therefore achieves greater success in justifying Jago’s decision to ruin Othello’s marriage as well as his career. Othello, at the end of the film, asks Jago “why?”, and the chilling words he receives in response are “because you took what was mine--” his position, and his love, that never got the chance to be expressed before the object of that love bestowed his affections upon another ( _ Othello _ ). In his twisted way, he views inflicting similar pain on Othello, betraying him in the same dastardly way, as a rational method of retribution.

Love, in Shakespeare’s  _ Othello _ , is not some simple, benevolent thing: a force that, in a pop culture ideal, draws two souls together to share a life of bliss. Love is a harbinger of chaos; love is the pen that writes soft words of adoration and the sword that severs innocent life in twain. Love is fluid, complex, shifting between characters and their bonds with each other to create ephemeral spider-threads of attachment that bend and intertwine knot, stinging soundly when they snap. These threads are thick with years, their silk the rough, plain white of a love untainted by sexual desire; these are bright with the novelty of new romance and slick with the dew of passion; these dark and twisted, having been spurned by the ends they never could make meet. Together, they create a daedal web of emotion that transcends the society of the play and posits itself firmly within our modern society’s ever-changing understandings of love in interaction. Davie’s film perpetuates the idea that love does not need to be sexual, nor does friendship need to be platonic. The lines between romantic and aromantic love can be ambiguous; one is not stronger or more binding than another. Longstanding platonic love can be rejected in favor of new sexual love, and the pain of betrayal will bite just as keenly as it would were one sexual love rejected for another. Love is not simple; love is not black-and-white. Love is, rather, passion and trust and closeness and desire, jealousy and hatred and pain and fear, all at once, mirroring the complexity, the ambiguity, of society itself.

  
  


Works Consulted:

Cimenian, Tamar. “An Insidious Web of Deceit: An Analysis of  _ Othello _ .” Print.

 

Davies, Andrew. Interview.  _ Masterpiece Theater _ . PBS. WGBH. Print.

 

Galland, Nicole.  _ I, Iago _ . New York City: HarperCollins Publishers, 2012. Print.

 

Hemming, Sarah. "Villain of the piece; Ahead of a new production of 'Othello', Rory Kinnear  talks to Sarah Hemming about what makes Iago such a complex character."  _ Financial Times _ 13  Apr. 2013: 14.  _ Business Insights: Essentials _ . Web. 17 Oct. 2016.

 

Walker, Eamonn. Interviewed by Helen Barrington.  _ Masterpiece Theater _ . PBS. WGBH. Print.

 

Works Cited:

_ Othello _ . Screenplay by Andrew Davies. Dir. Geoffrey Sax. Prod. Julie Gardner, et al. Perf. Eamonn Walker, Christopher Eccleston, and Keeley Hawes. ITV, 2001. DVD.

 

Stephen Greenblatt, et al.  _ The Norton Shakespeare.  _ 2nd ed. New York: W.W. Norton & Company. 2008. Print.

  
  
  



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